Writing
Design Practice

The Pros and Cons of Professional Language

Most industries have their own professional language — often described as “jargon” by the less generous amongst us. Some may point out how ironic it is that designers—who pride themselves in making things easy to understand—use language that deliberately obfuscates meaning. They’ll claim that this is done by gatekeepers attempting to shore up their positions in order to keep new entrants out. This may be true, but In the spirit of Occam's razor, I suspect there’s a much simpler (and less nefarious) explanation.

Design Practice

A Future of Design Without Designers?

I'm super interested in how the rise of automation and agentive technology may affect the role of the designer over the coming years. In this article I attempt to make sense of some of the current trends and outline one potential future (if we're not too careful).
Design Practice

What to Include in Your Design Portfolio

The purpose of a portfolio site is simple: to showcase the skills you have to the people who might want them. As such I’m often surprised when I see folks who describe themselves as UX/UI designers, choose to focus their portfolio on the UI side of the equation. It feels to me that these people may be selling themselves short by only focusing on a fraction of their skill-set, but before I jump into details, let’s start with some caveats. 
Design Leadership

Dealing With Conflict Using the PLEASE Framework

In my previous post I shared the idea that high functioning teams are comfortable with high levels of conflict, as long as it’s the right type of conflict— namely constructive conflict around “things” rather than judgemental conflict around “people”. This idea is sometimes described as “task conflict” versus “personality conflict”.